The Slice was packed to the rafters, wall to wall, April 9 for a big show featuring Vancouver’s Autumn Portrait, and local favourites the Necessities plus a trimmed down Sleeping With Tuesday who are eliminating the keyboards from their live show.

 I only caught a few of the Autumn Portrait’s set of upbeat, indie rock. There were lots of hummable melodies and catchy guitar playing from the trio.

 The Necessities, as always, were crowd pleasers with excellent vocal harmonies and a variety of instruments including lead singer Thomas Woodman playing some didgeridoo and Sleeping With Tuesday’s Dino Scavo stepping up to add some accordion for one number.

 They played most of the songs from their CD and had the cheering audience singing along with ‘Death To The Sun,’ the catchy chorus of “The Cricket Song.”

Sleeping With Tuesday, sans keyboardist Evan Schaaf played a typically upbeat of songs mostly from their latest CD “Shuffle,” including a couple of my favourites — the Cars influence  “Double Wide Lines,” and “Plastic Bottle,” as well as a very cool, funk flavoured new song.

There was a lot of psychedelic jammng and an ear piercing punk version of  Men At Work‘s ’80s hit “Land Down Under.”

 They still show a lot of Cars’ style ’80s new wave influence and add a variety of influences including a little reggae.